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Getting Initial Data

Start dumps, LBC files and ensemble data can be obtained from the Met Office MASS database. This covers the latest five years. Start dumps from earlier periods can be constructed as GRIB files from ECMWF data.

To get the data, create a help desk ticket providing the following information,

dates and times required,

project name,

estimate of the data volume in GB,

where in MASS the data is located if it is not one of the standard sets below.

Getting data from the Met Office

The start dumps are now stored in MASS, which can be accessed via MONSooN using the MOOSE interface.

Generally we prefer to get the output from the global runs - these have "qwqg" in the title; otherwise we get the global update - these have "qwqu" in the file name.

Older files

Older files are stored in a packed archive format - these have the extension ".pax". These usually contain several dumps and have names like,

coprr.udQU06.20060721.pax

where the "ud" denotes "unified model dump" and QU06 denotes global update output at 06Z. These have to be unpacked and the files relabelled. There is a script to do this in

#!/bin/ksh
# i will be like coprr.udQU06.20060725.pax
for i in *.pax
do
print $i
dat=${i%.*} # take .pax off the end
datestring=${dat##*.} # remove bit to left of the rightmost dot
pax -r -f $i
cd opdaily/datawgl
for j in *
do
mv $j $TMPDIR/${datestring}_$j
done
cd -
done

This assumes a list of pax files and unpacks, relabels and stores the results in $TMPDIR.

UKV start dumps

The UKV start dumps are in MOOSE with path names of the type:

moose:/opfc/atm/ukv/rerun/201108.file/20110810_qwqv03.T+1

moose:/opfc/atm/ukv/rerun/201108.file/20110810_qwqv06.T+1 etc…

UKV forecasts and analyses

The UKV forecasts and analyses are in the MOOSE with path names of the type

moose:/opfc/atm/ukv/prodm/YYYY.pp/prodm_op_ukv_YYYYMMDD_AA_NNN.pp for the multilevel fields and

MOGREPS-R files

At minimum, to re-run MOGREPS-R you need the analysis files in the mogreps-r path: E.g. 20110722_qwqy06.T+0.18km 20110722_qwqy18.T+0.18km

And all the perturbations files E.g. 20110722_perts.qwey06.oper??.pp1 where ?? Goes from 00 to 23 members.

Also in the mogreps-g path you need the boundary files: E.g. 20110722_qweg00.oper??.FRAMES.EY.tar.gz.

Getting data from ECMWF

The standard data I provide is from ECMWF's operational data. It is a deterministic forecast from the atmospheric model, version 1, analysis. It is not ERA.
Data prior to X is in GRIB1 format, after that it is GRIB2. The GRIB start dumps are created by concatenating the following fields:

skin temperature,

surface pressure,

land-sea mask,

geopotential,

temperature,

specific humidity,

U and V wind velocities

In contrast a UM dump contains typically a hundred fields. So the GRIB start dumps need to be reconfigured.